Nigerian forces suffered casualties in kidnap rescue: army

Nigeria's Minister of Defense, General Christopher Musa, poses for a photograph in his office at the Ministry of Defence in Abuja on July 2, 2026. [AFP]

Nigerian security forces suffered "casualties" during the rescue of over 40 kidnapped schoolchildren and teachers, the army said Saturday, in an operation that put an end to a major security crisis in the country's relatively safe southwest.

The pupils, whose rescue was announced Friday, were seized from three schools in Nigeria's Oyo state and had been in captivity for nearly two months.

The army said the children and staff were rescued following "carefully planned and executed" operations alongside intelligence agencies, police and local vigilante groups.

"However, there were some casualties on the part of the security forces," it said, without elaborating.

The shock kidnapping, in Oyo's Oriire local government area, was blamed on jihadists. President Bola Tinubu said the attackers were militants from Ansaru, a Boko Haram splinter group known to operate in central Nigeria, extending into the southwest.

"I was almost shedding tears yesterday when I saw them. It was mental torture," Abdulfatai Buhari, a senator from Oyo state, told AFP, noting there were two and three-year-olds among those kidnapped.

"They were so frail," he added.

Nigeria has been fighting a jihadist conflict that over the years has seen armed Islamist groups spread and fracture outside their strongholds in the northeast.

But the attack in Oyo state sent shockwaves through a country where many had long written off such violence as a problem contained in the north.

There, mass kidnappings have become an increasingly regular tactic of both jihadists and armed gangs known as "bandits".

It prompted protests across the country, a state-wide teachers' strike and high-profile condemnation -- all just months before the January 2027 presidential elections.

Southwest Nigeria -- home to economic capital Lagos -- has long been considered one of the safest regions in a country struggling with multiple security crises.

Oyo is one of Nigeria's most populous states, and its capital, Ibadan, is a major education hub.

- Students taken as 'leverage' -

Defence Minister Christopher Musa said last week that the kidnappers had tried to use the students as "leverage" with the Nigerian government, which is holding some of their commanders.

Musa said that the kidnappers had threatened to kill their hostages if security forces moved in on them.

But the army said its operations, which lasted more than a month, targeted the kidnappers' wider networks and dismantled several hideouts in the forests of Old Oyo National Park.

Several arrests across the country, meanwhile, "completely disorganised the group, exerted overwhelming pressure on them and ultimately led the terrorist group to 'unconditionally release' the pupils and teachers", said the military statement.

The pupils are being treated at a medical centre at a Nigerian military base in Ibadan.

Armed groups, notably jihadists, have long used mass school kidnappings in an attempt to extract ransoms and other demands -- most infamously in April 2014 when Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from a secondary school in Chibok, in northeastern Borno state.

A string of mass abductions in late 2025, including the kidnapping of two dozen schoolgirls in Kebbi state and the abduction of some 300 students and several teachers in Niger state, drew renewed international attention to Nigeria's insecurity.